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Hi everybody good morning nice to have you with us on a Friday morning Craig’s here while HOTAS enjoying time with the babies yeah just a Friday Good Friday a lot of folks have holiday travel plans the weather could impact those plans we’ll get to that in just a moment but first they’re the top story on this Friday morning wide-ranging reactions to the release of that mullah room that’s right it’s finally here it’s public Washington and the rest of the nation still processing everything contained in this two volumes 448 pages as we know the special counsel did not find sufficient evidence of collusion or conspiracy between the Trump team and Russia the report does give Democrats some ammunition on the issue of obstruction and now we understand why Moeller did not make a prosecutorial decision on that we’ve got complete coverage on what it all means we’ll start with NBC’s White House correspondent Peter Alexander Peter good morning to you Savannah good morning to you overnight the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a letter to Democratic lawmakers vowed after fully reviewing the Moller report in her words Congress will not be silent effectively previewing the possibility of further action she says to protect our democracy it comes as the president and his allies tout vindication but that 448 page document is filled with evidence of repeated lying by administration officials the president ordering aides to lie for him and his efforts to shut down or stifle the investigation president Trump reviving in Florida trying to turn the page following the release of Robert molars redacted report while Muller stops short of accusing the president of criminal wrongdoing Democrats are seizing on the unflattering portrait he paints of president Trump’s conduct the facts that are now established by this report are damning whether they could or should have resulted in the indictment of the president or people around him they are damning Muller reveals the president’s reaction in the Oval Office nearly two years ago when he first learned about the appointment of a special counsel writing based on notes from an official in the room that he slumped back in his chair and said oh my god this is terrible this is the end of my presidency I’m effed the reports most damaging details on obstruction of justice and the president’s repeated efforts to sabotage the Russia inquiry often through White House aides but Muller names at least 10 current and former administration officials or associates who defied the president’s orders among them White House cancelled don McGann who resisted the president’s ordered to remove Bowler deciding he would rather resign than participate in another Saturday night massacre according to the report President Trump also asked his former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski to tell then Attorney General Jeff sessions to publicly announce the investigation was unfair to the president Lewandowski never delivered that message Muller’s bottom line quote if we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice we would so state president Trump pushing back on Twitter I had the right to end the whole witch-hunt if I wanted I could have fired everyone including Moeller if I wanted I chose not to the report also outlines a sweeping and systemic effort by Russia to promote mr.

Trump’s candidacy laying out numerous contacts between Trump campaign associates and Russians before and after the election but Muller found insufficient evidence to prove the President or any other American conspired or coordinated with Russia in 2016 a conclusion emphasized by Attorney General you bar that is something that all Americans can and should be grateful to have confirmed Democrats argue that Attorney General bar mischaracterized the molar report effectively framing it in the president’s favor and this morning President Trump’s personal lawyers are trying to move on from the Russia investigation strongly indicating they will not release that long-promised counter report suggesting at this point it’s not needed Savannah Drake Peter Alexander at the White House thank you all right let’s uh let’s try and break down some more the top takeaways from this report and for that we turn to NBC justice correspondent Pete Williams who was among the first to see it and read it to us live on television yesterday Pete thank you so much for being with us let’s talk about this conclusion confusion if you will sir a lot of folks at home this morning might be wondering how could it be after two years that Robert Muller was unable to find some sort of connection some sort of obstruction connection or at least conclude that it was a crime what the report says that Muller’s team felt that the evidence was strong enough that they couldn’t let him off the hook and say conclusively that he didn’t commit a crime but the report also says because a long-standing Justice Department policy says a president can’t be indicted the team concluded they couldn’t even reach the point of deciding whether the evidence showed he committed a crime so the report in essence says they walked right up to that door and stopped and by the way the report rejects the claim by mr.

Trump’s lawyers that a president can’t even commit obstruction of justice because as the head of the executive branch he had the authority to tell federal employees what to do I think one of the reasons this was so confusing besides the fact that it’s a 400-page report everyone’s trying to read live on television but Pete as we now know Muller says as you just explained I’m not even going to decide whether this could be indicted because I can’t under the rules I’m just a prosecutor and the rules say you can’t indict a sitting president but it seems to me that the Attorney General William bar sets something a little different in that news conference before about why Miller decided not to make that judgment right the the Attorney General said in that news conference and implied this in letter that he sent in March that Muller told him in early March that he wasn’t going to reach this conclusion and that the reason was that the evidence was ambiguous that it pointed in both directions and that that’s the reason the report failed to reach a conclusion about obstruction what Barr said is that the finding was not based on the policy about not indicted a president so we’ll probably have to wait for Robert Muller to testify before Congress to get that answer and by the way mr.

Barr said yesterday he would have no objection to Muller testifying Pete Williams forced there in Washington thank you could stick into what happens next we have NBC’s white house correspondent Kristen Welker here also NBC News contributor Neal Katyal who is the former acting Solicitor General a Supreme Court lawyer good morning to both of you and let’s start right there because what exactly is the significance of robert muller saying i couldn’t even get to the point of deciding whether or not all this conduct which he lays out amounts to the crime of obstruction because the rules forbid me from doing so it’s huge Savannah so basically you know it’s not that sounds technically legal but it’s it’s actually really simple to break it down there are two ground rules that Muller says on pages 1 & 2 of his report and Barr didn’t tell us about either of them and that’s why I think there was so much confusion yesterday one is if I got so much evidence against the president that he’s guilty as sin I’m not gonna tell you and number two he says if I have no evidence against the president if the president is totally in the clear I am gonna tell you and Muller then writes this four hundred page report to say I don’t have enough evidence to clear the president and so the significance of this is you know Trump’s lawyers were saying oh best day of the presidency and so on that tells you more I think about the Trump presidency than anything else what it what the Muller report says is basically tees it up for Congress to investigate we heard Pelosi saying that’s what she’s going to do and then there’s this footnote in the opinion footnote 109 one which in which Muller says look even apart from a peach mint we could go after the president after he leaves office so a sitting president can’t be indicted but an ex-president can go to jail I just what a long time ago everything interesting is in the footnotes and then true that molars basically saying once he leaves office it’s fair game if the prosecutors want a prosecutor who tweeted that footnote yesterday I got a lot of attention online Kristen we just heard that Bob the Robert Barr Bob Barr would be fine with robert muller testifying likelihood that that happens and with the white house be okay with with Robert law and testifying before Congress as Democrats abassin so that’s a great question I put that question to one of the presidents top advisors Kellyanne Conway yesterday she ultimately got to the point of saying look we wouldn’t stop that from happening are they gonna be cheerleading for that every day I wouldn’t expect that but look this is about transparency and it’s also about having Democrats I think be able to take that next step because you have the democratic base Craig and Savannah’s saying look now we need to impeach and in talking to officials overnight they’re saying we’re not gonna take that step yet the next step really has to be talking to Muller and making sure that we see the full unredacted report well I mean Democrats have to determine for themselves whether how far they want to go with this and and whether they want to continue to investigate do you read the report as Muller saying explicitly or implicitly that this is a matter for Congress because he is forbade by these rules from doing anything in the Justice Department it’s definitely implicit and I think Muller was following the path of his predecessors the special prosecutor in Watergate Leon Jaworski the prosecute independent prosecutor for Monica Lewinsky Ken Starr both of them wrote reports to Congress in which they didn’t expressly say impeach or not they just laid out the evidence even when the evidence was so damning with Nixon and the evidence yesterday was quite damning against the president but they’re leaving it up to Congress to decide Kristen what do we know about how much voters actually care about all of this well I’m clearly following all of us how much is all of this going to to impact their votes in a year now and that is going to be the million-dollar question and that’s what we’re gonna find out on Election Day I think if you are the president and his allies and his legal team and this is why they’re not releasing the counter report they want to turn the page and they want to keep the focus on the bottom line that extraordinary news conference yesterday from the Attorney General where he came out and basically set the narrative for the administration you know really quickly on that I mean you obviously are a practicing lawyer you’ve you know worked as part of the Justice Department was that unusual because you know the Attorney General although appointed by the president is supposed to be an independent legal officer and a lot of people were struck by the tenor of his of his comments when discussing the evidence in a way that was very favorable report yeah exactly so as a defense attorney it’s not unusual at all I do that often trickle information out to protect my clients and a pin measured pace as the Attorney General of the United States absolutely he didn’t look like the Attorney General United States you look like the Attorney General for Donald Trump we will let’s see how this all plays out Neil cut y’all thank you for being here Kristin as always we’ll see our nightly tonight another big story this morning the weather the South dealing with damaging storms overnight and as we head into the holiday weekend tens of millions are facing more rough weather today we’ll get to Dylan’s forecast in just a moment but we start with Gabe Gutierrez who is standing by for us there in Atlanta Gabe what’s the scene Greg good morning there have been tornado warnings issued for parts of metro Atlanta earlier today right now we are still getting hit by rain and it is a soggy morning commute across the south there have been reports of at least two deaths so far tornado sirens here going off overnight that dangerous storm system sliced through the south toppling trees in Alabama after shredding parts of Mississippi this is a new circulation that’s popping up here one of the hardest hit areas the small town of Mortain a twister tearing through neighborhoods ripping off roofs and leveling homes there is a loud noise and then the house starts shaking and it was horrible I thought I was gonna die Michelle Salinas still in disbelief when I looked through the window I saw the trees everywhere it destroyed my car part of my house I’m just shocked despite the destruction no lives were lost there northeast of Morton torrential rain inundating roads forcing some residents to escape by boat and in Clinton just outside of Jackson the state capital powerful winds flipping cars and knocking out power in Arkansas flash flooding shutting down i30 some drivers had to be rescued all part of a fast-moving line of storms that had already slammed into Louisiana Oklahoma in Texas in Austin a home security camera capturing the moment lightning split a tree in half sending parts of it airborne landing inside this home the lights flickered in the house and a couple things fell off the walls I came out and saw the tree I’ve been split from the National Weather Service says there have been reports at least 10 possible tornadoes over the last 24 hours tens of thousands of people are without power there were deaths in Mississippi and Alabama as we just said we’re still getting rain here in Atlanta and air travel delays are expected up the East Coast as we head into this holiday weekend Craig and Savannah if there are delays at hartsfield-jackson there are de likely delays over the country thank you yeah good point Dylan’s in for al she’s tracking the storm threat today and the holiday weekend Dylan good morning what you got good morning well the heavy rain is moving through Atlanta right now we just south of Atlanta also have tornado watches in effect for another couple of hours heavy rain is continuing to slowly move to the east and within these storms we could see some very gusty winds some small hail possible and as we go into this afternoon that threat is going to increase even more especially across Virginia into North and South Carolina it’s been about three years since we’ve had a forecast like this for the Carolinas for winds in excess of six 70 miles per hour long track tornadoes meaning once they develop they could stay on the ground for an extended period of time we’re not looking at a huge risk of hail but torrential downpours are certainly a possibility and that could lead to some flash flooding so this storm is slowly going to move east a lot of these storms across Virginia in the Carolina is not really moving in until this afternoon in the Northeast those storms not really moving in until late tonight and in New England those storms not really moving in until early tomorrow morning then this whole storm system will continue to slowly clear out as we go into late morning on Saturday across New England and then we’re all seeing sunshine by Saturday afternoon as for the rain I’d say a widespread to two inches but we could see some areas picking up about three to four inches because of the tropical nature of these downpours and that’s why we do have 48 million people under some sort of flash flood watch because of the potential for that flooding guys all right then we’ll come back in just a moment we’ve got a lot more to get to on this Friday morning including the latest on the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral investigators in Paris now think that they have pinpointed the most likely cause nbc’s kelly cobiella has the latest developments Kelly good morning good morning to you correct yep the forensics teams are finally able to get access inside the Cathedral to really search for that evidence they’ve spoken to some 40 construction crews and Cathedral staff at this point trying to really pinpoint the exact source of that blaze this morning no trade-ins grande stone floors are still covered in charred debris from its collapsed roof and spire but it’s safe enough inside to rescue the cathedrals remaining artwork the fire that nearly brought down the entire building likely caused by an electrical short-circuit according to an Associated Press source investigators are still looking for the exact cause of the blaze the 850 year-old structure is unstable walls supported by wooden planks we look here for instance we’ve got this now freestanding gable wall there will have been some heat effect on the inside face of it which will have likely had an effect on the stability of the stonework itself Architects like Francis Maude who helped rebuild Windsor Castle after a devastating fire there in 1992 could help guide the reconstruction of Notre Dame at Windsor a hundred rooms were damaged or destroyed several roofs collapsed but the castle was saved in five years at a cost of about 55 million dollars we had a set of problems a set of challenges to restore that ceiling and roof structure which perhaps are going to be comparable to some of the challenges that we’ll face the people looking to restore not four diamond in in the roof there this morning more than a billion dollars has been pledged to rebuild Notre Dame the firefighters who saved it from total ruin honored as national heroes Thursday in a day-long tribute some experts have suggested it could take 15 years to rebuild notre-dame Cathedral president micron wants it done in five what else happens in five years guys Paris is hosting the 2024 Olympics that’s right jelly Kobe hey there and London telly thank you yeah let’s bring Dylan back in for the rest of the forecast morning good morning again yes the trouble spots will be up and down the East Coast but in the middle of the country look at that lots of sunshine temperatures in the 60s and 70s not too bad the west coast looking good except for Washington we will see a lot of clouds and some scattered showers up that way you

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